


Give or Take

by Galadriel1010



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Friendship, Honesty, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Second Chances, Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-18 06:27:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29239050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Galadriel1010/pseuds/Galadriel1010
Summary: Eighteen months since they last spoke, nearly two years after Sherlock's fall, Mycroft asks Greg out for dinner the night before he leaves the country to bring Sherlock home.
Relationships: Mycroft Holmes/Greg Lestrade
Comments: 17
Kudos: 82
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	Give or Take

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inalasahl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inalasahl/gifts).



Another day over. Ts crossed, Is dotted, drawers locked and files winging their way to their intended recipients. Greg already had a cigarette in his hand before he reached the lobby, and the nicotine hit his system like a shot of calm almost as soon as he crossed the threshold. The grey smoke curled into the grey air of a grey London street on a grey day. He sighed heavily, debated with himself between a curry from the new place on the corner by his flat or one from the Tesco on the other corner and tried to remember when his life had ended up quite this grey.

As his eyes drifted back to street level he was reminded abruptly of the date, time, place and manner. A sleek black car sat in a parking space across the road, where it had definitely not been the last time he looked out of his office window before leaving for the night, and Mycroft Holmes himself was leaning against it. He acknowledged Greg’s approach with a familiarly tight smile and nowhere near as much surprise as Greg felt at the fact that his feet were guiding him over there. As much as he tried to rationalise it away and remind himself that when a Holmes showed up it usually meant trouble – even though there was now only one Holmes to screw up his day – the fact that he couldn’t fight back a smile either meant that he was a masochist or that, and he was willing to admit this to himself at least, he’d missed the idiot.

“Mycroft Holmes, as I live and breathe.” He offered his hand in what he hoped was a casually friendly greeting, and Mycroft took it after a momentary startle that was only perceptible if you’d spent far too much of your life around him and Sherlock. “What’s brought you to our corner of town? Not trouble, I hope?”

“Not tonight,” Mycroft assured him, and he did not smile. “I wondered if you were free for dinner?”

Greg dropped his cigarette on the floor and stubbed it out with the heel of his boot, then picked the stub up and tucked it into the little tin that Sally insisted he carry. “I thought we weren’t doing that anymore. Sorry. That’s not a no, just to be clear. It’s just surprise.”

“Then is it a yes?” Mycroft raised his eyebrows and addressed the backs of his fingers. “There’s a new Tapas bar opened in Borough. Rather pretentious, but highly recommended by people whose opinions I trust. I believe it was my shout next.”

Eighteen months and Mycroft still remembered where they were at in the five-year cycle. Six year? Greg had long since stopped counting or keeping track by the time it came to its abrupt and unexpected end. He’d thought… It didn’t matter what he’d thought, except that he’d clearly been wrong. But Mycroft was as fascinating and impenetrable as he’d ever been, and even if he hadn’t been, Greg was a detective because he was too curious for his own good and always had been, and the idea of a top government official in an eye-wateringly expensive suit and a car with blacked out windows turning up out of the blue after eighteen months with only the most cursory contact was the stuff that Boy’s Own annuals were made of. He grinned at the thought and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Sure. I’ve missed pretentious.”

He’d missed Mycroft. Pretentious had just been part of the package.

It was late enough, thanks to the mountain of paperwork that Greg had been shuffling through, that the traffic had eased. That was why he left all his paperwork so late and never bothered dragging himself into the office before ten if he could help it. The car ride was awkward for the first minute and a half, until Greg caught Mycroft’s eye and gestured at their surroundings. “Another new motor? If I didn’t know what you do for a living, I’d be starting to suspect you’ve got a side-line.”

Mycroft raised one eyebrow. “You wish I merely smuggled drugs.”

He wished he didn’t find that as attractive as he did, but here they were. Greg managed to keep his expression sardonic. “I really don’t. That’s about the only way you could make my life more complicated than you already have.”

That was the wrong thing to say. Mycroft’s expression closed off and he looked out of the window sharply. “I apologise. I never intended to make your life… complicated.”

Greg shrugged at the back of Mycroft’s head. “I wouldn’t be a copper if I didn’t like a bit of complicated. It’s not a career for anyone who wants dinner at the same time every night, or at all for that matter.” The silence still dragged between them, so he sighed and leaned back into the really offensively comfortable leather seats. “How have you been, anyway? I’m sure you know what I had for breakfast as usual, but I’ve not seen you in ages.”

Eighteen months, give or take. Eighteen months since what Greg had thought was a perfectly amicable dinner and where he’d thought that this time, maybe, Mycroft might actually give in to temptation and snog him against the wall, and instead Mycroft had told him that he needed to cancel their standing arrangement. Which, eventually, Greg understood to mean that he couldn’t do Thursday night dinner and complaints anymore. And so they hadn’t. He’d texted a few times since, to make sure that Mycroft knew that the invitation was there for a one-off or to resume the habit if he wanted to, mostly so that Mycroft knew that he was there if he needed someone. But he hadn’t heard from him until, well, about ten minutes ago. Give or take.

Mycroft glanced back at him and his gaze danced across Greg. He smiled ruefully. “If you’re implying that you believe I have been monitoring you, I can assure you that I have done no such thing. But your habits have clearly changed little, and neither has the menu at the Copper Teapot.”

“Does that mean no one’s been trying to kill me?” Greg joked. As soon as he said it, he realised it wasn’t entirely a joke. It had been to cover up while he worked out whether he was hurt or relieved that Mycroft hadn’t been monitoring him, but it was also depressingly not-a-joke. The look Mycroft gave him confirmed it. “Alright, how many?”

“Not more than I could deal with, Detective Inspector,” Mycroft told him primly. He spread his fingers where they rested on his umbrella handle and regarded his manicured nails. “And no one with any competence.”

Greg sighed. “I do like an incompetent attempted murderer. They always make for the most interesting crime scenes. Still, it’d be a bugger to miss out on investigating my own.”

Mycroft smiled at that but refused to be drawn. “Alas, there has been rather a lot of news occupying my attention recently. Still, the Olympics went off without a hitch.”

“Yeah, the traffic was a dream. Really well managed Games Makers at all the stations.” He caught the minute twitch at the corner of Mycroft’s mouth where he managed to fight back a smile. “And getting the permits for Beckham’s trip up the Thames must have taken ages.”

Laughter lit up Mycroft’s face, even as it seemed to take him by surprise. His grip on his umbrella handle eased and he shook his head. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Being ridiculous.” He didn’t look at Greg. “I had managed to forget how much I missed it.”

Greg let that roll through him for a bit. “You always did have an overabundance of sublime in your life.”

“I’ve had rather too little of either recently.” His smile wasn’t entirely a lie when he turned back to face Greg once more. “And rather too much paperwork.”

“That’s not hard. Forms in triplicate and signed in blood.” The car turned onto London Bridge and Greg turned to look out at the lights up the river. He didn’t do that often enough. It was too easy to forget how much he loved this city when he didn’t have a second pair of eyes to see it through. “You need to get out more, Holmes. What have you been up to, anyway; apart from paperwork?”

Dinner was almost like old times. The tapas place was just as pretentious and good as Mycroft had said. Tucked down a side street a short walk from the market, it was decorated with paintings of Andalucía and baskets that overflowed with geraniums, and they ate to the accompaniment of flamboyant Flamenco guitar that was only a little too loud off a rainbow of tiny, brightly coloured plates that Mycroft ordered in fluent Spanish or possibly some regional dialect Greg didn’t recognise. Greg told him about his trip to Seville over the summer, Mycroft hinted vaguely at his trips to what sounded like half the world. They compared notes on gigs – Greg’s at the O2, Mycroft’s at the Royal Albert Hall and the Union Chapel – and on TV shows they’d both intended to watch and somehow ended up sleeping through instead. Dusk swept across the sky, patches of darkening blue starting to appear between the slate-grey clouds, and the lights of the Shard and the city beyond glittered like an earth-bound constellation.

Greg rolled his eyes at his own pretentions, a habit he’d almost kicked in the 18 months since they last did dinner. This was the effect Mycroft had on him. One of the effects. He leaned back in his chair and let Mycroft get the bill without argument, but gave him what he hoped was a cheerfully casual grin. “My shout next time. There’s this absolute hole opened up in Wandsworth, does the best biryani I’ve ever had. Shouldn’t scare your security too much either.”

“You say the most reassuring things,” Mycroft told him. He checked the time on his pocket watch and tapped his fingers on the table thoughtfully. “Do you have anywhere pressing to be?”

Even if he had, he wouldn’t have admitted it. “I think iPlayer will cope without my attention for another night.”

“A stroll, then? I can have the car pick us up at St Paul’s.”

“Sure. I’ve got time for a swift half at the Paternoster too, if you fancy it.” The evening was mild and quiet, with the school holiday crowds safely back home and the students not quite settled in yet. They still passed couples and groups all the way, and passed as just two more blokes in the crowd. There was a calm that he’d only ever found in the middle of a busy city, the sensation of being truly insignificant to everyone but those who mattered to you, just one grain of sand in an hourglass that measured thousands of years already. He stopped them halfway across the Millennium Bridge and leaned on the railing to look back down the river the way they’d come.

Mycroft stopped next to him obligingly and leaned on his umbrella. “Did you hear about the porpoise spotted by Putney Bridge last month? Only a purported sighting, of course, but delightful nonetheless.”

“There’s a pun in there somewhere, but I’m going to leave it alone.” He caught Mycroft’s eye and grinned. “Yeah, it’s pretty cool. I never thought we’d see that after the state it was in when I was a kid.”

“It’s a shining example of what can be achieved if we put our minds to it.”

Greg chuckled. “Yeah, something like that.” He looked back at the water. “My niece was volunteering on the Wallbrook dig over the summer. She found some cool stuff. Mostly pottery, you know, but 2000 years old. Thought about seeing if you wanted to go to their exhibition but…” He shrugged awkwardly. “Ah, you know what time is like.”

“An enigma, or a cruel mistress?” To Greg’s surprise, Mycroft mirrored his pose at his side, leaning on the railing with his umbrella hooked over his arm and his hands tangled together loosely. “I have kept an eye on progress, but… Not as closely as I would have liked. That’s… Kitty? Or her sister?”

“Yeah, Kitty,” Greg confirmed, a touch gruffly. He hadn’t expected Mycroft to remember her existence let alone her name, but he wasn’t sure why. This was Mycroft, he never forgot anything. “She stayed with me for the interview, but then they shared dig digs somewhere in Tottenham. It’s not ‘peng’ to stay with your uncle, apparently.”

Mycroft laughed. “Perish the thought that anyone could consider you ‘uncool’, Gregory.”

The sound of his name in Mycroft’s distinctive accent, and his full name that he only ever heard from Mycroft and his mum’s retired vicar, sent a curl of something through him again, enough that he finally found the courage to grab the bull by the horns and other metaphors. “It wasn’t something I said, was it?” he blurted, “Last year I mean. I dunno, I thought we were getting on fine, but if I… God, I don’t even know what I’m asking. Just…” He turned to look at Mycroft, who looked as uncomfortable as Greg now felt but not like he was about to leap to Greg’s rescue and finish the sentence for him. “We’re okay, aren’t we? Still… friends. Honestly, I thought we were on the way to more, but if that was just me and I was being a dick about it you could have told me to get back in my box.”

“You weren’t incorrect,” Mycroft said softly, which surprised Greg despite everything. He watched the river flowing below them and refused to spare Greg a glance. “That was, in fact, rather the problem.”

“Bad timing?” Greg guessed. Three months after Sherlock’s death, he wasn’t even sure where he’d been emotionally himself, and Sherlock wasn’t his little brother. They had both been messes.

Mycroft just shrugged though. “Is there such a thing as good timing? The simple fact is that I am accustomed to a level of discretion and secrecy in my personal relationships, but… But I lied to you, near constantly. And it troubled a conscience I thought I had dispensed with many years ago.”

He turned that thought over in his mind a few times. It wasn’t like he hadn’t thought about it before. Even in the early days when their friendship was based on complaining to each other about Sherlock because no one else could understand, that itself was rooted in the fact that Mycroft had very few people he could talk to, and that Greg was not actually one of them save on the subject of Sherlock. That’s how they ended up branching out to archaeology and architecture, travel and food, and all the things that he got the feeling that very few people ever thought to ask Mycroft Holmes. So he was theoretically fine with the concepts of secrets, but when did a secret become a lie? Did it matter if it was for national security more than if it was something personal? He sighed and rubbed his hands through his hair. “Yeah, fair enough. I don’t know what I’d do with that either. Is it, I mean… Christ.”

“As ever, you put my feelings into words quite precisely.”

Greg laughed out loud and a group of teenage girls turned to stare at them, then scuttled away giggling. He rolled his eyes at them and turned round to face back upriver, leaning back on the rail next to Mycroft. “You didn’t have to back out completely. I know it can be awkward, but I’d still have been here if you wanted a mate.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever had one of those.”

“Well, now you know.” He turned to regard Mycroft’s profile. “Are you still lying to me now?”

Mycroft sighed. “Yes. Although…” He shook his head. “No matter.”

He closed his eyes and tipped his head back to the darkening sky. “Will you answer me one question honestly?”

“That depends on what it is, but I will do my best.”

Greg didn’t open his eyes. “Are you okay?”

“Ah. You couldn’t choose an easy one, could you?”

He smiled. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

“I know.” Mycroft sighed heavily. “That is perhaps why I… That is…” He sighed again. “No.”

“No you can’t answer, or…” He opened his eyes at last and looked at Mycroft. “No you aren’t alright?”

Mycroft dragged his gaze from Greg back to the muddy water below their feet. “I’m leaving the country tomorrow morning. I don’t know how long I will be gone, or what I will find there.”

Greg’s breath caught, barely perceptibly unless the person you were standing next to was a Holmes. He shifted his weight so that his shoulder pressed against Mycroft’s for a moment. “I thought you didn’t do legwork anymore.”

“Only in cases of utmost necessity.” He didn’t look up, even when Greg turned and rested one hand against his shoulder, and the silence spooled out between them until he sighed once more. “So no, I’m not alright at all.”

“Come home with me,” Greg blurted. That made Mycroft look at him at last, eyes wide and startled, and it felt pretty good to get one over on him for once. Behind the surprise, though, Greg thought there was a flicker of hope or relief. It encouraged him to slide his hand down to the small of Mycroft’s back. “You don’t want to be alone tonight, and if you’re not sure you’re going to be coming back I don’t want to miss our last chance.”

Mycroft turned to face him, and Greg’s hand dropped to hang by his side. They were exposed on the bridge in the middle of the river, with tourists drifting past them and a late dinner cruise drifting upstream towards them. He searched Greg’s face. “When I return, I will be able to tell you the truth. All of it.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Greg told him. “The invitation’s still there for tonight.”

The ghost of a smile lingered at the corners of Mycroft’s eyes. “I’ll call the car to meet us at St Paul’s after all.”


End file.
